Posts Tagged ‘Female genital mutilation’

More than 90 percent of Egyptian women have undergone Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), also referred to, misleadingly, as female circumcision. A 14 year old Egyptian girl just died from it.

The numbers had begun to recede from an all time high of 97 percent of Egyptian women genitally mutilated. But all that changed when the Islamists came to power after the ouster of former Egyptian president Hosnai Mubarak.

Although FGM is not required under Shariah, the reduction in oppression of women was viewed as a vestige of the Mubarak era, and the Islamists reversed any forward movement on that front.

According to an article in AlAkhbar, the unnamed 14 year old girl died after being genitally mutilated by a doctor to whom her father had taken her for the procedure. Both the father and the doctor are facing criminal charges.

The practice of FGM was officially banned in Egypt in 2008, but it is widespread and continues to be practiced, especially in rural areas, according to Nehad Abul Komsan, the head of the Egyptian Center for Women’s Health.

The reason women are forced to undergo female genital mutilation is that it is believed by its proponents to “purify” women from sexual temptation. That would be because the women are so badly and brutally injured, that going to the bathroom or even sitting down can be painful for the duration of one’s life. And the lifelong discomfort which is often a side effect of FGM certainly would dissuade those who have had it to avoid anything that might cause further pain.

Although, according to the WHO, no religions require FGM, there are cultures in which the practice is believed to be required by the religion.

FGM is practiced most widely in more than two dozen countries throughout Africa. Countries in which it is currently estimated that more than 80 percent of all women have undergone FGM include Egypt (91.1), Somalia (97.9), Sudan (90), Sierra Leone (94), Guinea (95.6), Djibouti (93.1), Eritrea (88.7) and Mali (85.2).

Although all of the collected evidence suggests that FGM is most prevalent in Africa, and is nearly non-existent in the Middle East, in a 2007 article published in the Middle East Quarterly disputes that. The authors in that article emphatically state it is inaccurate to suggest that FGM is not widespread, despite the absence of reported evidence, in the Middle East. The absence of evidence has more to do with women and girls being forbidden to report the practice, especially to foreigners. This same article argues that FGM is considered by certain established authorities on Islam to be strongly encouraged by the Muslim faith.

More than 5,500 people, including prominent French politicians, scholars and clergymen, have signed a petition against attempts to ban the ritual circumcision of boys in Europe.

Titled “No to a ban on circumcision,” the petition was published on Oct. 16 by CRIF, the umbrella organization representing France’s Jewish communities, following the Oct. 1 passage of a Council of Europe resolution that calls male ritual circumcision a “violation of the physical integrity of children.”

Among the petition signers are Anne Hidalgo, a candidate in next year’s Paris mayoral elections, the director Claude Lanzmann and former government ministers Claude Goasguen and Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet.

By Thursday, the petition had more than 5,500 signatures.

The non-binding resolution by the Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly “targets European Jewish communities that are already exposed to the unprecedented resurgence of anti-Semitism,” the petition reads. “It is inconceivable to those who survived the Holocaust” and “dangerous because it stigmatizes Jews.”

Other co-signatories include Patrick Dubois, a French Catholic priest and Holocaust scholar, and Alain Massini, a well-known Protestant pastor.

The text of the petition also characterizes the resolution as “insulting” because it “equates between circumcision and [female genital] mutilation.”

Israeli President Shimon Peres called on the Council of Europe to reconsider a resolution condemning male ritual circumcision.

In a letter issued Sunday to Thorbjorn Jagland, secretary general of the Council of Europe — a pan-European intergovernmental organization — Peres wrote that he was “sorry to hear” of the resolution.

The resolution, which was passed overwhelmingly on Oct. 1 by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, calls male ritual circumcision a “violation of the physical integrity of children” and puts it in the same class as female genital mutilation.

“The ritual of male circumcision has been practiced by Jewish communities for thousands of years and is a fundamental element of our tradition and obligation as Jews,” Peres wrote. “The Jewish communities across Europe would be greatly afflicted to see their cultural and religious freedom impeded upon by the Council of Europe, an institution devoted to the protection of these very rights. I therefore urge the members of this distinguished assembly to reconsider this resolution.”

The resolution is non-binding and is not a direct threat to ritual circumcision.

It calls on member states to “adopt specific legal provisions to ensure that certain operations and practices will not be carried out before a child is old enough to be consulted.”

Among the practices named are female genital mutilation, the circumcision of young boys for religious reasons, early childhood medical interventions in the case of intersexual children, corporal punishment and the submission to or coercion of children into piercings, tattoos or plastic surgery.

The ritual circumcision of boys younger than 18 has come under attack increasingly in Scandinavia and German-speaking European countries both by left-wing secularists and right-wingers who fear the influence of immigration from Muslim countries.

First published in Missing Peace Turkish news agency Anadulo, citing Egypt’s oil minister Sherif Haddara, yesterday reported that Egypt will exhaust strategic oil reserves by the end of June.

According to Haddara, Egypt has enough diesel fuel to last eight days, butane enough for ten days and petrol enough for 14 days.

The news agency stated that the government was currently providing the nation’s gas stations with 18,000 tons of octane per day and 37,000 tons of diesel fuel, while also providing the country’s power stations with 23,000 tons of low-quality mazut fuel.

In recent weeks and months, Egypt has seen a spate of intermittent power blackouts, which government officials have attributed to chronic fuel shortages.

The situation in Egypt is rapidly spinning out of control. Last weekend two men were shot dead during clashes between supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and opponents of the regime.

Secular oppositions groups have announced that on June 30th mass demonstrations will resume in order to force the current Islamist government out of power. The Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamist allies reacted this weekend by staging a massive rally in support of president Mursi.

David Goldman an analyst for The Middle East Forum wrote in his analysis for the Asian Times that Egypt is dying and cannot be fixed anymore.

Here are some excerpts from his article:

“No-one has proposed a way to find the more than US$20 billion a year that Egypt requires to stay afloat. In June 2011, then French president Nicholas Sarkozy talked about a Group of Eight support program of that order of magnitude. No Western (or Gulf State) government, though, is willing to pour that sort of money down an Egyptian sinkhole.

Egypt remains a pre-modern society, with nearly 50% illiteracy, a 30% rate of consanguineal marriage, a 90% rate of female genital mutilation, and an un- or underemployment rate over 40%”

Today the commander of the Egyptian Armed Forces, General Abdel-Fattah El-Sissi, threatened that the army would not stay on the sidelines while the country is slipping into darkness. He warned that Egypt could descend into a civil war.

Sissi pointed out that “the armed forces had avoided being drawn into the political arena, but that its national, historic and moral responsibility to the people makes it imperative that it intervenes to stop Egypt slipping into a dark tunnel of conflict, internal fighting, exchanging accusations of treason and criminality, sectarian sedition, and the collapse of institutions.”

He warned against the dangers of division within the political arena following last Friday’s demonstrations in support of President Mursi.

He said: “It is important to have harmony among all parties, and those who think this situation is good for the country are mistaken. It harms the country and threatens Egyptian national security.”

To make things worse the situation in Sinai is also deteriorating. The newspaper Egypt Daily News painted a grim picture of the situation in the Sinai Peninsula.

“The situation in Sinai is just shockingly bad,” said Amr Hamzawy, an opposition politician and former MP. “We have both a security crisis and a development crisis there and we’ve had them for a long time.”

The stakes for Sinai’s drift toward chaos are high. The peninsula’s eographic position makes it vitally important not only to regional stability but to the global economy as well. The recent rise of Islamist militant groups in Sinai—its vast unsecured spaces are fertile ground for both recruitment and training—has led to fears of a fanatical armed enclave directly bordering both Israel and the Gaza Strip, according to Egypt Daily News

Some protesters in Cairo have now set up tents at the Defense Ministry and demand that Morsi hands over power to the army.

Between 130 and 150 million women are victims of genital mutilation – most of them are Africans, Deutsche Welle reports. Now, doctors, teachers and social workers in Germany report being confronted by this practice in ever growing numbers.

Jawahir Cumar, who moved to Germany with her parents from Somalia when she was a girl, witnessed, at age 20, on a visit to her grandparents’ village, the funeral of young girl who had bled to death after being “circumcised.”

Female genital mutilation (FGM) is practiced in 29 African countries, even though it is illegal in some of them. It is usually done when girls are between the ages of four and eight – using razor blades, kitchen knives and even broken glass and tin lids. Because these tools are used more than once, it also increases the spreading of bllod-based diseases like HIV/AIDS and hepatitis.

FGM alters or injures female genitalia for non-medical reasons, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). As a result, urine and menstrual fluids can hardly be discharged and remain trapped as a result,” explains Dr. Christoph Zerm, a gynecologist who specializes in counseling and treating women who have undergone FGM.

“This creates an environment that is conducive for infections. It can cause severe illness in the urinary tract and even the kidney. The uterus, ovaries and the fallopian tubes can also get infected,” he adds.

For many of these women, urinating can take up to 30 minutes, and is very painful.

Cumar, who was a small child when she was mutilated, later underwent several surgeries in Germany. She founded “Stop Mutilation,” to prevent other girls and women from having a similar experience.

“The immigrants that come here bring this problem with them. That’s what made me create this organization in 1996,” says Jawahir, who is now a mother of three.

An estimated 30,000 women living in Germany have been subjected to FGM and 6,000 girls are at risk, according to human rights organization Terre des Femmes.

“Mothers-in-law and grandmothers, especially, call all the time, write letters and send messages,” says Cumar. And the message is always the same, “you have to cut your daughters! Or just bring them to us and we will do it.”

Cumar visits kindergartens and advises teachers on how they can raise awareness about FGM. She also targets African immigrants in her advocacy work.

“Many of them don’t know that it is prohibited in Germany. They are shocked when they hear that they could lose custody of their children,” Cumar says.

She was able to prevent 17 girls from being subjected to FGM last year. But there’s still a lot of work to be done in Germany as well, says Cumar, pointing to how long it took for “honor killings” to be viewed by police as a criminal offence and not simply as the customs of immigrants.

Gynecologist Christoph Zerm would like medical German students to learn more about female genital mutilation, so that doctors can provide better care to women who are affected.